Beyond the general steps to optimize bandwidth usage listed above, there are specific steps that can be taken that are unique to each individual website.
The first step to find undesirable sources of traffic that can be address. See our article on Identifying Sources of Bandwidth Usage with AWStats.
Once the sources of traffic that need to be addressed are identified, follow the steps below to block them.
Block Human Sources of Traffic From Outside the Target Market
If the target audience is concentrated in specific regions, blocking traffic from other countries can significantly reduce bandwidth usage. There are 2 primary ways to do this:
- For sites using Cloudflare - use Cloudflare's WAF tool to block or allow traffic from a specific list of countries.
- For sites not using Cloudflare - use the built-in Block Traffic by Country tool in the Admin area of the website.
Block Traffic from Undesirable Bots
While some bots (like search engine crawlers) are essential for a website's visibility, others can consume significant bandwidth without providing any value to the website.
The default robots.txt file provided with the website blocks all bots except for major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) and Twitter/X.
In most cases, using the default robots.txt rules is sufficient to prevent the vast majority of unwanted bot traffic. Please see this article on managing the robots.txt file in order to restore the default rules or add custom ones.
For additional assistance:
Email support@brilliantdirectories.com or create a ticket Inside Your Account Dashboard.
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